Using the mySQL database and perl to create on-the-fly web pages

Bill Moninger
OAR/Forecast Systems Laboratory

I propose to give a tutorial on using the mySQL database and perl to create on-the-fly web pages. MySQL and perl are both freely-available, open source programs that are widely used to support web pages. In this tutorial, I'll describe relevant aspects of mySQL and perl, and explain how we have used these two tools to develop a set of web pages that provide on-the-fly statistical forecast verification results. When we moved from traditional data files to a mySQL database, the speed with which graphical results are generated increased by roughly two orders of magnitude. Also, it may be interesting that this is a distributed application; the database resides on a separate machine than the web server. An example of these web pages may be found at
http://www-ad.fsl.noaa.gov/afra/rtvs/convective200004/.

I plan to cover the following:

mySQL basics

- strengths and weaknesses
- example database architectures
- example SQL queries
- ease of development
- distributed use
- use of indices
- using "explain" to speed up queries
- balancing query speed and disk space usage
- some simple examples
- some real queries we use
- useful references perl
- a basic cgi script template
- using the perl DBI model to connect to a database
- generating SQL queries
- parsing query results
- generating graphical output Alternatives to consider
- other databases - Java
- PHP

BIO -Bill Moninger Bill is chair of FSL's World Wide Web Working Group, which has been responsible for developing FSL's top-level web pages since 1995. Bill has developed numerous web applications in perl, javascript, and java. Bill has taught university courses on the social and ethical issues around the internet, and has lectured widely on this subject, and on topics in web development and security. For a full biography, see http://www-frd.fsl.noaa.gov/~moninger/.

Auditorium - Tutorial Thursday, 1:40 - 2:40 P.M